Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Working Conversations podcast, where we talk all things leadership, business, communication, and trends in organizational life. I'm your host, Dr. Janel Anderson.

Are you ready for the workplace of 2025? AI is reshaping how we work. Hybrid teams are redefining collaboration and leaders are expected to mentor, coach, and anticipate the future. Whether you're an employee looking to level up or a leader aiming to inspire, mastering the right skills isn't just an advantage, it's essential. In this episode, we'll break down the nine key skills that you need to stay ahead. Backed by research and real world strategies, let's dive in and future proof your career together.

Now, last week on the podcast, I shared my predictions for the 2025 workplace. And this is the perfect follow up episode where we're going to discuss the key skills that you can develop that will help you thrive in 2025. Nice. It rhymes. Now, if you missed last week's episode, I'm going to encourage you to go back and catch that after this one. It's a great companion episode to these key skills. Now, I'm going to categorize the key skills into three buckets. First, key key skills for employees.

Now, even if you're a leader or a manager, you're also an employee, so these can be applied to any role. The next bucket is for leaders. And in my worldview, if you know that, if you've been following the podcast for any length of time, you know this, you can lead from anywhere on the organizational chart, so these can also be applied to any role. And then the third bucket absolutely applies to everyone. So there are nine skills in total. Now, part of breaking it down into three groups of three is to make it more manageable. Don't try to develop all nine of these skills at once. Pick a category and then pick one or two skills in that category to develop.

And I'd highly recommend you bookmark this episode and come back to it when you're ready to develop a couple more skills and continue to chip away at it. All right, let's dive in. We're going to start with the three key skills for employees. And remember, that includes everyone. The first key skill, AI literacy. AI tools like ChatGPT, Dolly Propensity, and all of the others out there are becoming everyday workplace staples. Employees must understand how to work alongside these tools to enhance productivity rather than fear them or misuse them. So what does that mean for you? Well, AI literacy includes knowing how to prompt AI effectively.

And I did a podcast episode about that. You can go back and listen to that one if you need some tips on that. It also means that you know how to evaluate its outputs. You need to be use your critical thinking skills to figure out what you're going to do with what AI gives you, and then how do you integrate its suggestions into your work? Also, how do you layer different AI tools? Because there's some that are better at one thing and others that are better at another thing. And so it's no a surprise that you might use one to analyze data and a second to write a report. Now, according to PricewaterhouseCooper's study, 67% of employees believe that AI will help them work more efficiently, but only 33% feel confident in their ability to use it. So 2/3 of employees know that this is important, but only one third of employees really have the skills yet. Now, if you're among the 1/3 who doesn't believe this is important, well, first of all, you need to get on board.

Then if among the 2/3 who don't have the confidence yet to use tools effectively, you need to be taking some training courses, listening to podcasts like mine and figure and just get in there and play with them and experiment for yourself. All right, so a practical tip. Start small. Use one of the AI tools to streamline repetitive tasks like email drafting or scheduling. Of course, you're going to then revise and use a human touch on top of that. But AI can give you a really good, crummy first draft to work from. Then you can experiment with more complex applications like data analysis or creative brainstorming or layering different AI tools like I was mentioning.

The very, very best thing, though, is just to get in there and experiment. Get your hands dirty a little bit. You're not going to break it. And provided you're complying with any rules or regulations that your organization might have, you're not necessarily doing anything wrong, especially if you're giving it a second look and proofreading when you're done, or proofreading when AI is done, I should say.

All right, skill number two, adaptability and resilience. Now, you've heard it before, change is the only constant. Yes, change is the only constant these days. And workplaces will continue to evolve rapidly.

It's at breakneck speed these days, my friends. So what does this mean? Well, adaptability is about adjusting to new environments, new tools, and new expectations. While, on the other hand, resilience helps you recover quickly from challenges. And you need both. You need that adaptability and flexibility to roll with the punches when things change quickly. And then you need resilience when you make mistakes or when things don't go as planned. Now here's a great example. Think about the transition to remote work in 2020 for those who had jobs that could be done from home, they had to, and those who adapted quickly gained a competitive edge.

Now, not only did individuals who adapted quickly gain a competitive edge, but organizations that were able to adapt quickly also gained a competitive edge, while their counterparts struggled and fell behind and potentially lost market share if they were organizations or lost opportunities for advancement if they were individuals. So a practical tip in this area build resilience by practicing mindfulness and by focusing on controllable aspects of change. You can't change everything at once, and some are outside of your control. So stay adaptable by continuously updating your skills and recognize how it feels when you're confronted with change. Because when you can feel it in your body, that makes a difference in terms of moving that sensation in your body up to your cognitive level where you can do some critical thinking and processing on it. If we just leave it in our body without thinking about it or without even noticing it in our bodies, it can do more harm than good and we're not necessarily going to be able to make the best of it. All right?

And my third key skill for employees is digital collaboration. Hybrid and remote work are here to stay, my friends, whether you like them or not. And making digital collaboration a core skill in 2025 is going to give you a competitive edge. Well, what do I mean by making digital collaboration a core skill? Well beyond mastering tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams, it's really about fostering. It's about being clear and using the tools to generate clarity out of not only yourself but others. And it's also about staying connected in these virtual spaces and getting to know people and establishing those relationships. Research by McKinsey found that effective virtual collaboration can boost team productivity by up to 25%. So think about it. When you're appreciative of your coworkers instead of struggling with them, productivity goes up. Your engagement goes up, your job satisfaction goes up.

Everything goes up. It is so well worth it to develop this skill. So practical tip. Use structured communication practices like sliding clear agendas for meetings or following up with concise, actionable summaries. Now, AI can help you with that. And I have an excellent class on how to conduct effective meetings as well. Whether you're in person or online or hybrid. So reach out to me, if that's something that your organization needs.

And other than that, another practical tip is to just to dive into the different tools that you're using and learn all their features, experiment with them, play games with them. Don't take it too seriously. You know, if you want to start using the whiteboard for boxes and arrows, diagrams and flowcharts, well, play a game of tic tac toe so that you get used to drawing some circles and lines and things like that. Just make it lighthearted as you dig in and learn the tools and then think about how you can use them more effectively.

All right, now let me give you three key skills for leaders. The first one is empathy and emotional intelligence. As workplaces become more diverse and more inclusive and more geographically distributed, leaders need strong emotional intelligence to manage those teams effectively. So what does that actually mean? Well, empathy involves understanding and valuing the experiences of the experiences of your team members. While emotional intelligence helps you manage relationships and emotions and recognize that everybody's not going to have the same emotional responses to things that you do.

Now a study by Korn Ferry A study by the Korn Ferry Institute found that companies with emotional intelligent leaders outperform their peers by 37%. That's over a third higher performance. People want to be heard and seen and that validation and recognition starts at the top. When mid level leaders see their senior leaders taking time to get to know people and to learn what makes them tick and to really acknowledge a job well done, well, there's a trickle down effect and it becomes part of the organizational culture. Now. A practical tip, don't just check up on people like whether or not they're getting their work done. Also make it a standard practice to check each in on people.

Now start one on one meetings by asking about their well being or their family before jumping into workload and work product and work related things. And listen actively and attentively without interrupting or offering any solutions. Just be there for the other person. That's what I mean by checking in instead of checking up on them.

All right, key skill number two for leaders. Future focused decision making. Leaders must anticipate trends and guide their organization towards sustainable success. The world is changing faster than ever before and to keep up with it at this breakneck speed, you have to be anticipating the future and making decisions that are future based.

So what does this actually mean? Well, this skill blends strategic thinking with the ability to respond quickly in response to new information. It also means keeping your head up and looking around at all sorts of factors that might be impacting your industry, even things that are unusual suspects. So here's an example. Companies that invested early in remote work infrastructure outperformed their competitors during the pandemic. That is, they provided their employees with the right kinds of tools, whether those be physical tools like standing desks or better home based equipment, or software tools like better collaboration software. Those companies, again, that invested early, they outperformed. And they I would I don't have specific data for this in front of me, but I would guess that their retention levels were higher as well. So practical tip dedicate each month to strategic so practical tip in this area, dedicate time each month to strategic foresight, analyzing trends in technology, the economy and your industry to inform decisions.

And you've heard me talk about that here on the podcast as well. When I talk about having white space on your calendar, leaders and employees alike, I'm talking to you. If you've got back to back to back meetings all day long and you don't have any white space on your calendar, you can't possibly be making any future focused decisions. You have to have that white space on your calendar for when things come up that are unanticipated, whether they be in the broader marketplace or inside your own organization. And I'll link up in the show notes where you can get that episode on creating more white space in your work day, work week, and work month.

All right, and my third key skill for leaders, coaching and development. So employees increasingly expect leaders to act as mentors and career coaches. And one of the best ways to learn to do that effectively is for you, my dear leader, to have an executive coach yourself.

So what does it mean? Well, coaching focuses on helping employees build skills, achieve goals, and find fulfillment in their roles. It's more about learning. It's more about the person being coached learning to find the answers from within instead of depending on somebody else to give you the answers. Much like an athletic coach who can see your performance from a different vantage point than you can your coach, you as a leader coach can reflect back to an employee what you're seeing in their performance that they might not be able to see themselves. That's what a good executive coach does. And again, employees need this more than ever. And they're expecting it and wanting it to be in the workplace, wanting it to be from a leader that they trust. Now Gallup reports that employees who feel supported by their managers are 70% less likely to experience burnout 77.0 that is so dramatic.

So coaching, mentoring, and offering other types of professional development are Key to making employees feel supported. Also, when you're investing in them like that, they're much less likely to leave, so you're going to reduce your turnover as well. So practical tip. Schedule those regular one on ones not just focused on the work, but schedule additional one on ones focused on career development and career growth, not just those performance metrics. Ask open ended questions like what skills would you like to develop in the coming year? And then secure the resources for them to develop these skills. Sometimes it's as simple as giving them some discretion to go out to LinkedIn Learning and look up some short courses on that particular skill that they want to develop and then keep track of their goals and follow up with them. That is so meaningful when your leader remembers what you're up to and asks you about it. All right, so those are your three key skills for leaders.

Now let's dive into an area that is shared across employees and leaders. So I have three skills in this bucket as well. The first one is discernment. Now, in an age of information overload, discernment is the ability to make sense of vast amounts of input in a chaotic world, and from that to make sound judgments. And this is a critical skill for everyone. So what does it mean? Well, discernment includes data literacy, decision making skills, and the ability to separate noise from meaningful insights. It's about considering various options and choosing the best one. It involves recognizing the meaning of small details and knowing when they matter and when to let them go.

It involves scrutinizing similar things to spot the difference. And it's about taking in vast amounts of data and making sense of it. And again, if you don't have any white space on your calendar, you're not going to have much chance at discernment. A Gartner report shows that 90% of corporate strategies will explicitly mention data as a key asset in 2025. And data itself is useless. We need to be able to app strategic thinking skills like discernment to data in order to make data driven decisions. So a practical tip. When presented with data, ask these three questions.

Number one, where did it come from? Number two, what biases might it contain? And number three, how does it align with other information that I know to be true? And you may need to grapple with these questions quite a bit in order to really engage in the process of discernment, that is discernment in action.

All right, key skill number two for everybody. Conflict management and difficult conversations. The workplace of 2025 will demand skillful handling of disagreements to maintain hormone the workplace of 2025 will demand skillful handling of disagreements to maintain harmony and productivity. So what does this even mean? Well, this includes resolving misunderstandings, addressing performance issues for those of you who are managers, or even giving your peers performance feedback, and navigating interpersonal tension. And remember, when we're communicating through screens like email, text messages, teams, slack, and so on, it's easier than ever to miscommunicate. Just for example, it's easy to misunderstand one another when social cues like tone of voice and facial expressions are missing. So leaders and employees alike must assume positive intent when there are those misunderstandings and then address them quickly and constructively.

So practical tip in this area, start with teeing up a difficult conversation with common ground like these, project deadlines are nearly impossible to meet. When you get on the same page and build some agreement beforehand, you mitigate the likelihood of the other person getting defensive. When the brain is in agreement, there is nothing to get defensive about. And for more tips on strategies on handling those difficult conversations, grab a copy of my book Head on How to Approach Difficult Conversations Directly, and you can download the first few chapters @janelanderson.com/headon and we'll link that up in the show notes, which you can [email protected]/198 for episode 198, which this is all right.

And key skill number three for everyone is human connection. As technology becomes more pervasive and touches so many parts of our work, maintaining genuine human connections and relationships is more important than ever. So what do I mean by this? Well, this skill goes beyond basic communication skills to include being able to build trust and rapport and psychological safety. And to do so at a distance.

Because again, if you're working that hybrid or remote schedule, you have to bridge the distance in order to create that human connection. A study by BetterUp found that employees who feel connected to their teams are 75% more engaged and 50% less likely to quit. Again, this is about seeing each other and really getting each other and understanding each other. Feeling heard and seen is so critical. So a practical tip. Whether you're remote or in person or some of each, work in that hybrid schedule. Prioritize small moments of connection, like checking in on somebody's weekend or celebrating milestones or just finding out what they care about and then remembering and asking them in your next conversation. It is so meaningful.

When somebody remembers my children's names or remembers a hobby that I have or a book that I'm reading, it really, really does make a difference. It creates that human connection and we learn more about each other.

All right, so there you have it, my friends. The top three skills for employees, for leaders, and for everyone. And as a quick recap for employees, AI Literacy, adaptability and resilience and digital collaboration for leaders, empathy and emotional intelligence, future focused decision making and coaching and development and for everyone, discernment conflict management in difficult conversations and human connection. Again, all nine of these apply to everyone, but I've broken them out rather arbitrarily into three buckets so that you can dig in where it makes sense for you to dig in. Now, as we wrap up today's episode, let's remember that the future of work is not only about waiting for change to happen, it's about preparing for it. Today, these nine skills are your roadmap to staying relevant, resilient, and ready for whatever comes next.

Whether you're mastering AI, fostering human connection, or tackling those tough conversations, every step that you take now is an investment in your future success. Thanks for joining me on this journey. I can't wait to see how you are going to thrive in 2025 and beyond. And if you missed last week's episode on my predictions for 2025 for the workplace, well, you're going to want to head over to janelanderson.com/197 Episode 197 or wherever you get your podcasts to listen to that one. It's a great compliment to this episode. Thanks for joining me on today's episode of the podcast. If this topic resonated with you or you have ideas for future episodes again, I would love to hear from you. As always, stay curious, stay informed and stay ahead of the curve.

And tune in next week for another insightful exploration of the trends that are shaping our professional world. If you learned something or you simply enjoy this content, please subscribe to my channel on YouTube, subscribe to the podcast on your podcast platform of choice and follow me on social media. These are all excellent no cost ways for you to support me and my work. You'll find links to my social media over on the Show Notes page. Again, that's janelanderson/198 for episode 198 that this is until next time my friends. Keep thriving and working toward the future of work that we all want. Stay connected, stay curious and I will catch you next week. Until then, be well.